


Oh the Humanity

by BlankPersonality



Series: Exponent 1 meets Integer 1 [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Storyshift, And I suck at it, Child Chara, Gen, Gender-Neutral Chara, Good Chara, Lore interpretation, Prequel, Sitting down and talking, War Veteran Undyne, Yeah that's a first isn't it?, literally just that, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7530073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlankPersonality/pseuds/BlankPersonality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Frisk falling, what exactly happened? Nobody can exactly explain everything, but there's this side of the shift.<br/>A sidestory.</p>
<p>One -- Undyne and Chara have their first little chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh the Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> Behold, the most exposition-filled, dialogue-heavy thing I have probably ever written (that's a lie), and it's still as clear as a bathroom window.

Chara remembered their first one-on-one conversation with Ultimate Undyne. It started with her doing everything in her power to impale them with her spears.

“NGAH!! HUMAN!” she roared, somehow convulsing violently enough to push herself into a sitting position on the pink medical bed without any of her limbs intact, and three completely gone. “ASGORE!! GET OUT OF HERE AND EVACUATE EVERYONE NOW! HUMAN IN THE HOTLAND LABS!”

Frankly, there wasn’t much talking after that. 

Thankfully Dad managed to come back soon enough that the lab didn’t end up _completely_ destroyed. He came back, arms laden with the parts and equipment he needed to give Undyne her upgrades, but then dropped them on the ground immediately upon spotting his adopted child running around and dodging for their life. 

“Undyne!” he shouted in that firm but calming way, not quite having the confidence to yell bloody murder. “Stop! Stop it! It’s okay, Undyne! It’s okay! The war is over!’

There were more words exchanged after that, but Chara didn’t know what they were. In retrospect, it was to be expected that they would run off pretty shaken after the near-death experience. All they knew was, they found themself in a closed-off cavern in the Waterfalls hours after the incident, curled up into a ball with their heart still beating painfully hard inside their chest.

It was a long time before Dad allowed them to sneak out to his lab again after that. He blamed himself for the attack, which of course only he would do. Chara had a feeling the ban could’ve stretched on for years even, if, a few days after her attack, Undyne hadn’t shown up unannounced to their house.

Because she did.

\--

Dad was in his lab and their brother was in Waterfall at his and Mum’s training field to work on his strength and speed so Chara was home alone for the day. They hadn’t been expecting anybody but perhaps their order of toys were here, though what delivery person could have such solid door-rattling knocks, they weren’t sure. Perhaps just a very enthusiastic one.

“Coming!” They opened the door and immediately tried to slam it closed again.

“Whoah, there!” The blue fish Monster reacted fast, catching the edge before it could reunite with the doorframe. Her mere one fist had so much strength in it she accidentally splintered the wood. It was certainly apparent that her current four limbs were an upgrade from what they had been previously.

Shocked off guard, Chara let go of their grip on the solid plank on hinges -- the only barrier they had against what they had perceived at the time as certain death. That proved to be a mistake as it allowed Undyne to push it wide open and let herself slip inside through the threshold. The door closed behind her. They were now together in one room, again. 

And this time, there was no distant hope of anyone coming to save them.

Chara swallowed down a scream and scrambled to back away as fast as they could, their arms coming up to the air in front of them defensively. In their haste, they tripped over their own feet and fell on their rump on the carpet with a dampened _thump_ , then clambering at the floors to pull themself back, away, clawing for the few extra inches they could put between themself and their soon-to-be-slayer. They had to look up now to meet Undyne’s yellow scleras. 

Powerless; that was how they felt. 

Powerless, alone, and scared.

Undyne advanced. Chara could feel and hear every beat of their heart, pushing against the blood that had frozen solid within their veins. Icy cold panic pounded in their head, mixing violently with dread and a fading hot flash of denial. They were going to die now.

The cybord approached, shoulders squared and the muscles in her arms tensing. This was it. She was preparing on taking their Soul once and for all, for the good of Monsterkind.

“Wait!” Chara forced themself to lower their arm and looked her straight in the eyes even as they visibly shook in fear. “W-when you kill me!” they blurted out, almost shouting the words. They felt lightheaded. “P-Please! Please take my body away where Asreil and Mum wouldn’t find it!”

The clunking of Undyne’s boots stopped in front of them. The small human didn’t exactly know when they had closed their eyes, but they didn’t want to open them now fear of what they would see next. Perhaps the tip of a spear, inches from their eyeballs. The thought was quite sickening. “What?”

“AND! And -- if you k- _kill_ me in a bloody way, please try to clean up before you go. Th-That’s my dying wish.”

“Dying wish?” Undyne repeated. She sounded incredulous. Oh no. What if that was too much to ask? Now she wouldn’t even listen to the first one, would she? Or maybe she would, being a Monster at all.

“Y-yes. I don’t want Asreil thinking about this house as the place of my death. Um, if you can, maybe even pretend like you killed me somewhere outside? As I was walking home, or something, you intercepted me... Please!”

A couple of heartbeats passed tensely, in which Chara stubbornly refused to open their eyes, mouth frozen lips parted and teeth gritted in a fearful grimace. Death was coming, just in a few seconds. Any moment now...

Undyne was laughing.

A first, in small, chortling bursts, which momentarily became replaced with sniggers instead as if she had tried to muffle them, and then failed as they evolved to loud chuckling barks instead, which then gave way to full-blown, genuine belly laughs. 

“Punk, I like your style!” she yelled at the human, making them wince. “I’m not here to kill you,” she reassured with a toothy grin that didn’t at all make Chara any less panicky. “My name’s Undyne, and I’m here to uh,” she scratched her neck sheepishly and diverted her eyes, “apologize, I guess.”

\--

“‘Asreil’?” Undyne snorted a few minutes later, a cup of steaming hot tea between her hands. She lounged at their dining table as she took a sip, arms only making the faintest of whirring sounds to show for the fact that they weren't organic. 

“'Rei’ for short,” Chara mumbled shyly. “Nothing...nothing wrong with that, right?” 

“Of course not,” the blue-scaled Monster chuckled. “Though I guess for all you know, giving nicknames can be the most offensive thing you could’ve done to us. It’s not,” she was quick to calm the human down, seeing the flash of horror that flitted across their face. “But well, yeah. You wouldn’t know. Talk of Monsters is probably strictly forbidden on the surface, huh?”

“Um,” Chara shuddered, recalling the many folktales they had heard in the past. Almost all of them included at least one Monster of some kind. “Not when it involved scaring children to sleep,” they shrugged helplessly. “Always in a bad light.”

Undyne hung her head at her cup and exhaled faintly. Her eyes were going distant. Chara chewed their bottom lip and stared at the floorboards next to the table, the tension in their shoulders relaxing as the pregnant pause settled between them. 

“So they went through with it,” she suddenly said, rubbing the bridge between her eyes. Chara straightened their spine and fixed Undyne with an attentive gaze. She 'tch’-ed silently but complied, explaining, “When the War ended, most of us were too scared or wounded to even look the Humans in the eyes anymore. I wasn’t one of them. I was one of the last to retreat, and I remember passing by the front lines, looking up at brave soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder protecting us, the losing side. Ready to lay down their lives for the good of Monsterkind… And we ended up facing the Humans’ backs.” The ever present whir coming from Undyne’s limbs suddenly escalated to fill the room. Proving that it was possible, her brows furrowed down even more. “I heard them then, one last thing as they were sealing us all Underground.” Under her fingers, cracks spread out over the ceramic mug. “'Let us forget this,’ they said.”

The cup shattered and spilled tea bled out onto a puddle on the table. Neither gave it much attention.

Chara however, was still hung up on the first sentence. “There was a war?” they squeaked. 

At first she didn’t answer. The wasted tea streamed off to the side, where it then fell dully onto the floor and seeped away through the boards. Undyne stared at them like they had put on a tutu and started reciting classic literature. A beat passed. 

“You -- SERIOUSLY?” Her face contorted in fury and disgust. “THOSE BASTARDS! Jerkfaces! Corn-growing sonsova --” she proceeded to curse out obscenities that Mum would definitely have more than a bit of a problem with. She was mad, that was easy to see, but the human could tell the anger wasn’t directed at them. This remained true even when she ceased, breathing hard, chest heaving, and pointed her index finger at their face. “Wait, how old even are you, kid?”

Chara was alarmed but not yet on their feet. Flustered, they stared at their fingers and tried to come up with an answer. “Um, at least five harvests…?”

“At least -- at least five?” She spluttered. Glowering, Undyne banged her fist on the table and making the tiny human flinch at the loud wooden sound. Its legs shook and groaned under the strain.

“Um, Undyne, miss,” Chara melted into their seat. “P-please calm down.”

“Calm down?” She seethed. The human’s words seemed to have the opposite effect on her than what they hoped. Undyne stood and started pacing in front of the fireplace, agitated. “You were alive when your sorcerers sealed us here, and yet to you, the single most historical day to us Monsters at the moment never even happened? ! How did they keep us a secret? _Why?_ ”

Chara swallowed thickly and mumbled something under their breath, skin breaking out in cold sweat. Their irises flashed matt black, though it was hard to catch as they started blinking their eyelids rapidly in the fire-lit room. 

“ _There was a law._ ”

With some difficulty, the fish Monster stopped her feet from running away under her and forced herself to sit back down in quick, jerky movements. More wood splintered accidentally under her tense figure. “What was that?”

“There was… a law,” Chara mumbled again, helplessly. “The king passed it. Our -- The human king. And he said… he said, that nobody was to speak of the Monsters in context of their earnest existence under charge of conspiracy against the kingdom. He’s… he’s an unwell man. I’ve heard people say he’s a king that’s scared of everything. Of prophecies, of gods, and of the fates too.”

Undyne propped her elbows on the table and rubbed at the lines under her eyes, which had become only that more prominent in the horizontal, amber lighting. “That why you didn’t know what we are?”

“Yes and no. I -- I still knew _where_ , because I thought that I’d have to warn travellers that pass by my village about Mount Ebott and, well, about you. I thought that if I didn’t, nobody else would.” Chara rubbed their arms and fixed their eyes on the floor, afraid to blink. “But now maybe I think the villagers told me that on purpose in hopes that they’d finally have a reason to get rid of me once and for all.”

“Why would they want to do that?” Undyne seems genuinely confused. “You’re wearing stripes, so even in human years, you must be really young, right? What reason could there be for wanting a little brat like you gone?”

Chara didn’t answer for the longest time, instead letting their conversation become dominated with the crackling of the flames in the fireplace, which were like soothing voices offering comfort for the distressed human. They stared at the table, at their white fingers gripping tightly around their own lukewarm cup, hands too small to even meet at both sides. Undyne furrowed her eyebrows but did not ask, instead averting her eyes to the side. She crossed her bionic legs and clenched and unclenched her left fist on the table.

A dozen heartbeats later, Chara removed their hands from the cup and slowly brought them forward. They cupped their hands together. Undyne met their very solemn eyes with her own unappraising ones and raised her left eyebrow.

“What?” She asked.

“You have to promise not to freak out,” Chara gazed intently at her, head tilted low. “Promise.”

“What -- kid, you okay --?”

“Promise!” 

Undyne blinked in surprise. She could’ve been wrong, and she really doubted she was, but she thought she heard their voice break, just a bit. And now that she thought about it, was it normal for humans to be shaking outside of battle?

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I promise.”

Chara took a breath, exhaled, and suddenly there was a ball of magic floating just above their hands.

To say 'magic’ would perhaps be inaccurate. Because it wasn’t, nor was it really a ball at all. If Undyne really had to give a description for what had appeared above Chara’s hands, she would call it a hole, punched straight through the world. It seemed to slowly but surely suck in warmth and light, fighting indefinitely against the defending magic blazing on in the fireplace. 

An impossible wind had started up inside the room, not strong, but easily _there_. The fire lost a little bit of its snap in the orb’s presence. 

She almost didn’t want to give it a name. 

Chara squeezed their eyes shut and clapped their trembling hands together, snuffing the dark sphere out instantly. The atmosphere in the living room returned to normal, almost as if nothing important had just happened. The fire was back to its old self in no time as the only source of illumination in the room. Human and Monster took breaths together in silence, regaining each of their bearings with different thoughts running through their heads.

Undyne let out a breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding and blinked her sore eyes. 

“I have magic,” Chara summarised simply, voice small. “It’s different from Monster magic though.”

“I can see that.” Undyne snapped her head up to watch for the other’s reaction, regretting her biting dismissal almost immediately. “I mean, ah --” she cursed. “Sorry, kid. I’m just surprised, ‘s all. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of humans during the war. You all look the same, sure, but your Souls have a bit more variety to them, especially your magicians. I’ve seen a lot, fought a lot, come closer to personal demonstrations of just how much raw power some of you can have more times than anybody would like, but that? What -- what was that?”

Should they answer? Chara rocked silently back and forth on their seat, feet tapping against the air nervously. “That was my magic,” they eventually shrugged in the middle of an exhale. One other thing caught their attention though, that perhaps in retrospect should’ve made Undyne scarier, should’ve made it just that much more unbelievable that their little talk hadn’t blown up in their face again like last time, but for now Chara clung to as a change in topics.

“You fought during the war?”

“Ooh yeah,” Undyne affirmed solemnly, a slightly sick smirk on her face. She seemed disturbed, squinting against whatever that was flashing past her eyelids. Chara rubbed their hands together and gulped. “Took up the mantel after my father...” she trailed off, shifting her eyes to look off to the side as she let the deadened air fill in the blanks. 

“I’m sorry,” they said. They didn’t completely understand everything, but they knew they felt bad. About what yet though, they hadn’t quite grasped completely. “How… how did it happen?”

Undyne laughed, but the sudden, too-loud sound was painfully forced and died after a couple of huffs. “...I’d rather not say,” she coughed. Clearing her throat, she wouldn’t meet their eyes. “Anyway, that’s how I lost my arms and legs. In the war. Not fun. Wanna see?” 

“No, thank you,” they hastily declined, at which the blue fish scoffed but for some reason looked pleased at.

She teased, slowly growing grin looking a lot more genuine than earlier. “Oh c’mon. I bet you’ll puke!”

At the responding look on the human’s face, Undyne chuckled good-naturedly, banging an open palm on the table so hard the tremors could be felt through the floorboards.

“Anyway, kid. The most important point, the thing I think all of us here would like to hear about though -- ‘Asreil’?”

“What? That’s his name, right?” Chara swiveled their head from side to side, childishly looking for where the rest of ‘us’ might be. “I called him ‘Rei’ once and he was okay with it, so his real name is ‘Asreil’, right?”

“Chara, that what everybody calls you?” They nodded. Undyne had a cheeky smile on her face they felt they had to be wary of. 

It had been four months since they had first fallen down into the Underground and saw the face of the first Monster they had ever met. They got the subject of the War, which Chara felt like they had seen their family tiptoe around for a few days now, out of the way, so why did Chara feel like they were about to be given another life-changing revelation?

Undyne rested her elbows on the table and leaned in, and they followed subconsciously, eyes wide in anticipation and worry. “Listen, I might be mistaken, but last I checked, Doc’s son’s called ‘As-RI-el’, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry this is a day later than promised. My friend just got back from a long trip and we've been spending a couple of days together catching up.  
> Just finished an entire chocolate bar writing this. Chara, look what you made me do. Real talk though, I struggled a lot writing this, but I hope it still conveys the backstory I hoped to convey.


End file.
